'All Options Are Open': Hezbollah Leader Warns Israel's Assault on Gaza Could Spark Wider War

Speaking publicly for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanon-based political party and militant group Hezbollah, on Friday warned that Israel and its U.S. enablers risk igniting a regional conflagration.

"Our first goal must be to end war on Gaza, second to ensure victory of the resistance," said Nasrallah, the 63-year-old Hezbollah secretary-general, during his televised address.

Raising the "realistic possibility" of a "wide war" in the Middle East, Nasrallah said that "on our front, all options are open."

"All the options are open to us and we studied all the options," he added. "We must be ready... for all the options that could happen in the future."

Nasrallah said that 57 Hezbollah "martyrs" have been killed fighting Israeli forces in southern Lebanon since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel that left more than 1,400 Israel civilians and soldiers dead and around 240 others as hostages of the militants.

Palestinian officials said Friday that Israel's war on Gaza has since killed at least 9,227 Palestinians, including more than 3,800 children and 2,400 women, while wounding over 23,000 others, destroying around 177,000 homes, and forcing 1.4 million people to flee for their lives. Palestinian, international, and even Israeli critics have called Israel's war "genocidal."

More than 140 Palestinians have also been killed by Israeli troops and settlers from illegal apartheid colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

"Some say I'm going to announce that we have entered the battle, but we already entered the battle on October 8," Nasrallah continued, noting that Hezbollah's cross-border strikes have diverted Israeli forces from the fight in Gaza.

"Our operations on the border target enemy vehicles, soldiers, and equipment," he said.

Nasrallah also noted the missiles and drones launched at Israel on Tuesday by Houthis rebels in Yemen and attacks by Iran-backed militias targeting U.S. military forces in Iraq. Although widely viewed as ineffective tokens of solidarity with Gaza and resistance to Israel, analysts say the attacks show the dangerous potential for escalation of the war.

"Whoever wants to prevent a regional war, and I am talking to the Americans, must quickly halt the aggression on Gaza," Nasrallah stressed. "You, the Americans, can stop the aggression against Gaza because it is your aggression."

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a request from President Joe Biden for $14.3 billion in emergency military aid for Israel, which would come in addition to the almost $4 billion in annual armed assistance given nearly without condition by Washington.

Biden, meanwhile, early in the war proclaimed his "rock-solid and unwavering" support for Israel, while drawing accusations of "genocide denial" for aspersing Gaza casualty figures from Palestinian agencies his own State Department deemed reliable as recently as last year.

"You, the Americans, know very well that if war breaks out in the region, your fleets will be of no use, nor will fighting from the air be of any benefit, and the one who will pay the price will be... your interests, your soldiers, and your fleets," Nasrallahan continued.

"I tell you with all sincerity, we have prepared well for your fleets, with which you are threatening us," Nasrallah added ominously.

According to a 2022 report published by the Alma Research and Education Center, an Israeli nonprofit focused on security issues along Israel's northern border, Hezbollah's advanced arsenal includes large numbers of precision ballistic, cruise, surface-to-air, anti-tank, and anti-ship missiles, as well as thousands of unmanned aerial drones.

Additionally, the report says Hezbollah has tens of thousands of unguided missiles and rockets and more than 100,000 artillery and mortar rounds.

While the exact number of Hezbollah fighters is uncertain—Nasrallah often claims to have 100,000 men at arms, but this is widely believed to be an exaggeration—experts say the militant group probably has between 25,000-50,000 troops. These include around 10,000 members of the elite Radwan Force.

Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are also battle-hardened veterans of Syria's nearly decadelong civil war. Analysts say Hezbollah's goal isn't just being one of the strongest spokes in what it calls the "Axis of Resistance" against Israel—which includes Iran, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, Hamas, and the Houthis—but also the dominant player in Lebanon, where the group's political wing and its allies last year lost their parliamentary majority but remain a formidable force.

In his Friday speech, Nasrallah also said that Hezbollah had no advance knowledge of Hamas' "glorious, blessed" surprise attack on Israel.

"The October 7 operation was planned in total secrecy, even other Palestinian factions were not privy to it, let alone resistance movements abroad," Nasrallah asserted.

"The international community keeps bringing up Iran and its military plans, but the October 7 attack was a 100% Palestinian operation, planned and executed by Palestinians for the Palestinian cause, it has no relation at all to any international or regional issues," he insisted.

"One of the biggest mistakes that the Israelis made and they continue is setting far-reaching objectives that they cannot achieve or reach."

Nasrallah further claimed that the attacks proved "that Israel is weaker than a spider’s web," while noting that Israeli forces "have not been able to make any achievements" toward victory despite their ferocious monthlong bombardment of Gaza.

"One of the biggest mistakes that the Israelis made and they continue is setting far-reaching objectives that they cannot achieve or reach," Nasrallah said, comparing Israel's stated objective of destroying Hamas with its failed attempt at "crushing the resistance in Lebanon" during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, which ended inconclusively.

"The end of this battle will be Gaza's victory, and the defeat of this enemy," he asserted, while imploring "those silent over Israel's crime in Gaza" to "rethink their humanity."